Charlie Chan Carries On by Earl Derr Biggers

The white façade of the Berkeley brought memories of a cruel blackmailer seized, dazed and helpless, as he stepped from his bath. A darkened shop front recalled that early morning when he had bent over the French woman, murdered among her Paris gowns. There, looming in dignified splendor through the rain, was the exclusive club where, with a few quiet words, he had taken an absconding banker. The West End had been his hunting preserve.

Up to a short time ago he had been divisional detective-inspector at the Vine Street station, and so in charge of the C.

It was a thoroughfare of memories for him, and now they crowded about him.

With no definite destination in mind, Duff wandered along down Piccadilly. The inspector had smiled gently at the recollection. Studied clues where the trade-winds whispered in flowering trees and the month was always June. A modest chap who followed the profession of man-hunting against such a background. As he watched it Duff had thought of a fellow detective, encountered some years before in San Francisco. The story had been photographed in the South Seas–palm-fringed shores, blazing skies, eternal sunshine. For the past three hours he had been sitting in the Marble Arch Pavilion, a cinema theater, hoping to be taken out of himself. Water dripped from the brim of his old felt hat. What next?ĭuff moved on, his ulster wrapped close about him. Getting hold of a letter the murderer had written to the woman in Battersea Park Road, seeing at once the double meaning of a harmless little phrase, seizing upon it and holding on until he had the picture complete. But perseverance had won–that, and a bit of the Duff luck. And what a merry chase he had led Scotland Yard before his final capture. A cowardly murderer, with no conscience, no human feeling whatever.

Only that morning a long and tedious case had come to an end as he sat in court and watched the judge, in his ominous black cap, sentence an insignificant, sullen-looking little man to the scaffold. Though naturally of a serene and even temperament, Inspector Duff was at the moment in a rather restless mood. They will never appear as evidence in court. One must keep in mind the clock and the calendar where chief inspectors are concerned, although in this case the items are relatively unimportant. James’s Park, he had just heard Big Ben on the Houses of Parliament strike the hour of ten. Chief Inspector Duff, of Scotland Yard, was walking down Piccadilly in the rain.

Charlie Chan Carries On by Earl Derr Biggers